The Case for Coaching

As workers continue to quit their jobs in record-breaking droves, companies are rightfully reconsidering how to retain their employees and create better opportunities from within so that they don’t pursue them elsewhere. Compensation and benefits are important to retain employees and get recruits through the door, but recent studies show opportunities for growth is among the top priorities for wandering talent. When thinking about how to nurture and maintain a confident and happy workforce, professional coaching is a key piece of the puzzle. Coaching has proven to be a powerful tool for creating more diverse leadership teams, cultivating a culture of wellbeing, and importantly, retaining top talent.

More Than Just an HR Solution

At LHH, coaching is at the core of our DNA. We believe that meaningful professional coaching is more than just an HR solution. Coaching is a transformational experience, delivered through a deeply human connection that propels the success of individuals and teams.

Our coaches span 60 countries helping people build new skills or capabilities and strengthen existing ones through our premier, highly personalized, and high-touch, one-on-one executive and career coaching solution, as well as coaching at scale across all levels of the organization.

To help leaders navigate their most pressing challenges, coaches can help build their leadership skills to maximize the performance and satisfaction of entire teams. This bespoke support empowers employees to grow in ways that are meaningful to both them and their organizations. 

Beyond Executives

And coaching is no longer just for executives. Ezra, a virtual coaching platform powered by LHH, is on a mission to democratize professional coaching so that it’s available beyond just the C-suite, where historically most coaching happens. Ezra has found that users of the app see improved promotion rates of 11% and that 77% of users report being more likely to stay with their current company. Additionally, 71% of leaders coached show a positive impact on their personal and organizational performance.

An investment in coaching and professional development is an investment in the longevity and health of any organization. Our approach to coaching isn’t one-dimensional. We’re advocates of building it into other HR processes such as recruiting and retention - ensuring the transition into a new role is seamless and comfortable. Professional coaching may not feel like the most intuitive solution for addressing recruitment, but it can be a powerful tool in winning the talent wars. When a financial services firm approached LHH with hundreds of open roles, we helped them improve their recruitment process while at the same time, providing virtual professional coaching for their onboarding processes. Together, these two approaches resulted in volume hires in record time, filling over 200 (and counting) open tech and management roles in a matter of months.  

Coaching and Women in the Workplace

Through our work, we’ve also found that coaching can be crucial in boosting the confidence of women workers, particularly in male-dominated industries. LHH’s global behavioral study, the Readiness Index, exposed some of the hesitancy women face in the workforce: despite 84% of women feeling they have the skills needed to advance, they're more anxious about their next career move than men are.

Unsurprisingly, by equipping women with a professional coach, we’ve seen organizations make transformative strides in addressing gender gaps at the highest levels of leadership. LHH has seen targeted coaching lead to increased promotions – a crucial outcome when we consider that women leaders make up only 24% of today’s C-suite. Further, a newly released Deloitte study found that 53% of women reported stress levels higher than they were a year ago, making the need to address workplace burnout at an individual level even more urgent.

Engaging the Disillusioned Youth

Another segment facing workplace uncertainty is Gen Z, which is on track to make up 30% of the workforce by 2030. This crucial sector of emerging talent that entered the workforce in the middle of a global pandemic report in high numbers feeling disillusioned as a result of starting their career in a remote or hybrid working world. The Readiness Index found an overall low level of control amongst Gen Z respondents and a pessimistic outlook over their future: more than one-third (34%) of respondents ages 18 to 24 did not think they could use their existing skillsets at work, 33% did not think they could control the next steps in their careers and 55% said they were anxious about taking that next step. To tackle this disconnection faced by younger workers, many companies moved to bring them back into the office, but didn’t address the core issues: feeling underutilized and the lack of transparent and accessible pathways to grow within their organizations. Coaching and mentorship can engage disillusioned Gen Z workers and offer clear directions for growth, setting them up for long-term career success and increasing the likelihood that they’ll stick around with the organizations that invest in them.

Looking to the Future

As we move into the future of work, it’s more crucial than ever to attract, uplift, and nurture talent, and one effective way to do that is by creating a workplace where they feel valued and see opportunities for growth.

At the onset of the pandemic, coaching helped individuals and organizations adapt to workplace changes like remote work. Now, with many workers returning to the office or back to the workforce, coaching can once again help us find much-needed stability as we adjust to a new work landscape. On the business side, with unemployment being consistently low and employers struggling to find the skilled entry- and mid-level talent they need, corporate leaders must prioritize coaching if they want to maintain valuable talent. Professional coaching is a win-win.